The invention relates to a twin passenger seat for installation in vehicles such as buses, ships or airplanes including a base with legs supporting two seat members with backrests rigidly or tiltably mounted thereon.
Like other seats, passenger seats need to be comfortable and have to have an appealing appearance but, in addition, they need to be "safe". Since such seats are subjected to much rougher wear and tear than normal seats, such seats must be extremely sturdy, they must be capable of withstanding crash energies without breakage, that is, they should be resilient, they need to remain free of rattles over long periods of use and they should be quite light. In addition it is important that they are economical to manufacture and also economical to maintain by providing easily exchangeable wear parts. Furthermore such seats should be easily mountable in the vehicle and easily adjustable to the space conditions available in a vehicle. Finally such seats when unassembled should require relatively little space so that they have only a small shipping volume, that is, they can be shipped unassembled in relatively small packages for economic reasons.
Applicant's earlier U.S. Pat. No. 4,422,691 discloses a passenger seat arrangement which, to a large extent, fulfills the objectives of the present invention, that is, it discloses a seat with a seat support structure including two support legs with an interconnecting transverse frame member and a mounting plate disposed on the frame member on which mounting plate the seat members and the backrests are supported. Such a seat structure has sufficient rigidity, yet yields without breakage when passengers are retained by such a seat during an accident; it is simple and easy to manufacture and can be shipped easily in a knocked-down state and it has also relatively little weight.
Nevertheless improvements are still desirable and the present invention relates to an improved design of such a seating structure.